Ask HN: Who does whiteboard interviews? - <AUTHOR> Similar to who is hiring/firing topics on HN, we should start a black list of companies that do onsite whiteboard interviews or notepad phone interviews (algo/data structure). Let's stand up and  bypass those silly interviews.
https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/21/the-terrible-technical-interview
https://medium.com/lightspeed-venture-partners/most-tech-interviews-suck-the-only-4-questions-that-matter-1a71181ef4d4 <comment><USER2> You can blacklist anywhere I work; I want to see how people approach a problem, and see some basic coding skills.

While I prefer take-home exercises, I'm always going to ask people to sketch something out for me.

<comment><USER3> This is a great way to pass over great coders who are introverted or just thrown off by the act of writing code on a board. Younger people won't even have learned handwriting skills in school and will have a really hard time.

If you want to test how someone is at coding, why not pair with them? Why not hire them on contract for a few weeks instead of making them do unpaid homework when they already might have a full-time job?

If you use artificial tests that are unlike the real job, you're going to get lower-quality candidates.

<comment><USER2> I've never worked in a place that doesn't have whiteboarding sessions for design, architecture, algos, etc. but YMMV on that one.

In 30 years I've never met anybody that can't write well enough to be read-- that counter-argument I don't even understand. ¯\\(°_o)/¯

I also do pairing, but that won't solve the introversion issue at all. If anything it might exacerbate it because of personal space issues. Remote pairing is fine for this, and I do that as well, but it's a little weird for an onsite.

I've never had the resources for a short-term contract, and there are often legal issues involved regarding IP, NDAs, HIPAA, whatever. Personally I think that would be the best approach, but you _have_ to get to the point where you want to _offer_ them a "short-term" contract. That's not something I'd ever be willing to do without having a pretty good handle on whether or not hiring them is a possibility.

I've mis-hired precisely once in twenty years. It may not be an ideal process, but it's worked for me so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pivotal

Google

Also, would be a good idea to link to some research/essays about why whiteboard interviews are bad for both employers and applicants.</comment>


Honest to a Fault: Pepys's journals bear witness to events large and small - <AUTHOR> https://www.neh.gov/article/honest-fault <comment><USER2> This Twitter account is tweeting the diary out a few sentences at a time. I've been following it for a while, with out knowing much about who Samuel Pepys was. [https://twitter.com/samuelpepys](https://twitter.com/samuelpepys)

</comment><comment><USER3> Samuel Pepys is mentioned quite often in Bill Bryson's book titled At Home. I had just read this paragraph yesterday:

> By chance, a Cambridge scholar, the Reverend George Neville, a master of > Magdalene College, saw Macpherson's passing reference to Pepys's diaries and > grew intrigued to know what else might be in them. Pepys after all had lived > through momentous times - through the restoration of the monarchy, the last > great plague epidemic, the Great Fire of London of 1666 - so their content > was bound to be of interest. He commissioned a clever but penurious student > named John Smith to see if he could crack the code and transcribe the > diaries. The work took Smith three years. The result of course was the most > celebrated diary in the English language. Had Pepys not had that cup of tea, > Macpherson not mentioned it in a dull history, Neville been less curious, > and young Smith less intelligent and dogged, the name Samuel Pepys would > mean nothing to anyone but naval historians, and a very considerable part of > what we know about how people lived in the second half of the seventeenth > century would in fact be unknown. So it was a good thing that he had that > cup of tea.

<comment><USER4> Your comment is especially relevant re this quote from the original article: "Thus do we hear of Pepys's plan to burn a compromising book so it won't be found in his library, even though his library includes the diary in which he records the purchase and his plans to conceal it. It's as if Pepys can't suppress his compulsive candor."

Pepys wrote in a rare (Shelton) form of shorthand and then used code words as well, for further security. His writings were reasonably secure, in their time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I ran across this plaque on the "Hung, Drawn and Quartered" pub in London once. Talk about British wit.

[http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/38/18/381862_cbced004.jpg](http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/38/18/381862_cbced004.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.pepysdiary.com/](https://www.pepysdiary.com/) has annotated daily entries.

They're all great reading.

</comment><comment><USER7> Victuals!</comment>